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If credit for the "L" in GLBT could be pinned on anyone's bosom it might be that of Del Martin, co- founder in 1953 of Daughters of Bilitis, who died in San Francisco August 27 at age 87.

"Today the LGBT movement lost a real hero," says Kate Kendell, head of the National Center for Lesbian Rights. "For all of Del's life, she was an activist and organizer even before we knew what those terms meant."

Along with longtime lover Phyllis Lyon, who survives her, Del Martin was at the San Francisco apartment on October 19, 1955 when eight women met to form Daughter of Bilitis. The gathering lay the foundation for the first national lesbian organization in the U.S.

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DOB, together with the Mattachine Society and One, Inc., were the "Big Three" U.S. homophile groups in the 1950s. The trio were centered on the West Coast and often sparked with each other. But together they paved the way for gay liberation in the late 1960s and '70s -- whose militancy soon, in turn, eclipsed its more cautious forebears.

Like its fellows, DOB's name was steeped in obscurity -- in this case a book of poetry by Pierre Louys featuring a Greek contemporary of Sappho. But if DOB sometimes gave off the whiff of the closet, it was because of the challenges of the times.

"We were illegal, immoral, and sick -- I mean, that was heavy-duty," Martin recalled in a 1995 interview in Paul D. Cain's Leading the Parade. "So what we needed to do was develop self-esteem, and self-acceptance being the real key. And then, once you have accepted yourself, then you can start coping in a hostile society."

Born in San Francisco in 1921, Martin studied journalism at UC Berkeley and briefly married, having a daughter, whose custody she later gave up to her husband. Moving to Seattle, she met Phyllis Lyon in 1950 when they both worked at the same construction-trades journal.

For more than half a century, Martin was a voice for lesbian visibility. "Nothing was ever accomplished by hiding in a dark corner," she declared as DOB's first president. "Why not discard the hermitage for the heritage that awaits any red-blooded American woman who dares to claim it?"

In the months after that first meeting, DOB's small membership would split -- with most of the working-class women, as Martin characterized it later, leaving to form a lesbian social club. Deb and Phil stayed behind, and were key to fashioning DOB on a political and activist course. Part of that strategy was founding a magazine, and The Ladder helped spread DOB's profile across North America.

"Reading one little article in '59 by Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon... got to me and changed my life from being a suicidal kid in Canada, to being out of the closet immediately, never knowing what it was like to be in the closet," declared comedian Robin Tyler."

Martin threw herself into national gay organizing, and was active in the North American Conference of Homophile Organizations (NACHO) through the '60s. But she often wasn't content with the gay movement as she found it.

"At every one of these conventions I attend, year after year, I find I must defend the Daughters of Bilitis as a separate and distinct women's organization," she declared at one NACHO gathering. "Lesbians are not satisfied to be auxiliary members or second-class homosexuals."

Gay men's sexuality seemed to bother her. "There are many other phases of the American Sexual Revolution to which Lesbians may address themselves than to get bogged down in the defense of promiscuity among male homosexuals and of public sexual activity in 'tea rooms.'" she wrote in the June 1967 issue of The Ladder. Lesbians, she went on, "are much more concerned with problems of inequality in job and educational opportunities than in the problems of male hustlers and prostitutes."

As DOB faded in the 1970s, Martin and Lyon switched their energies from collaborating with gay men to working with straight feminists. Together they wrote the 1972 Lesbian/Woman, which argued lesbianism was less about sex and more about women being women-centric. Martin was elected to the board of the National Organization of Women (NOW) in 1973 -- a sign of the group's decreasing unease over homosexuality. In 1977 she wrote one of the first books about domestic violence.

"I had the greatest respect and fondness for them," says Paul Cain, who profiled the two women. "We also shared the same heroes -- Eleanor Roosevelt (whom Phyllis once interviewed) and Harvey Milk."

Adds longtime Chicago gay activist William B Kelley: "I deeply regret Del's loss but am glad she remained an activist until the end." Kelley remembers that Martin once publicly took him to task for what she claimed was slighting the lesbian contribution to gay liberation. "Of course, I intended no such thing," he says, "but I never argued with her about it."

In 1977, Martin and Lyon declared in the Advocate that they would not choose to marry, even if it were possible. But they changed their mind. In San Francisco on June 16, in her last public political act, Martin married her partner of 55 years, after a court decision in a case she and Lyon helped bring about.

Author Profile:  Bill Andriette
Bill Andriette is features editor of The Guide
Email:	theguide@guidemag.com